Category Archives: Prison & the justice system

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Please read and share my newest on Truthout: “Abolitionists From Around the World Gather to Plan for the End of Prisons.” It starts like so: “In July 2017 more than 200 people from across the globe met for four days in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was once home to abolitionist Frederick Douglass and a major stop on the Underground Railroad. Meeting intentionally in a place with such historical significance to the abolition movement, conferees came together to learn more about the relationship between the carceral state and struggles against colonialism and slavery.”

Above is a picture of Massachusetts activists Elly Kaulfis (R) and Rachel Corey (L), not included in the article but there workshop is discussed

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I am posting this important notice for Massachusetts from the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety (CEPS).

As many of you know, there have been hearings by the Joint Committee on the Judiciary this summer on many bills that are important to everyone fighting for justice. One area which is crucial, but unfortunately not on everyone’s radar, is parole. The Coalition for Effective Public Safety is writing to urge you to TAKE ACTION TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY THIS WEEKand contact members of the Judiciary Committee to support “An Act Related to Parole,” S.779(Sen. William Brownsberger) andH.3121 (Rep. Dave Rogers). A Fact Sheet on these parole bills–they are the same–is attached to this email. We have also heard that the Senate will be deciding its priorities on Wednesday, July 12th.Parole reform is crucial if we want to end mass incarceration.

Why we need these bills to become law now

1) They increases Parole Board membership from seven to nine members and requires six members to sit as the full Board for all lifer release hearings. At present, prisoners serving non-life State Prison sentences and House of Correction sentences are not receiving their parole hearings on time. Some Prisoners’ parole eligibility dates come and go without a parole hearing. Also, prisoners serving life sentences generally wait between six and eight months for their parole decisions. Additional Board members will help to correct these serious problems.

These bills also require that at least three members of the Parole Board have at least five years of experience in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, or the treatment of substance use disorder. They also requires that one member be a licensed mental health professional.Our Parole Board needs members with more diversity of experience in order to effectively evaluate the people seeking parole who come before it.

At present, only one of six members, Dr. Charlene Bonner, has extensive clinical experience as a forensic psychologist. (There is one vacancy) There is no one on the Board with education and experience in clinical social work, psychiatry, medicine or sociology. The Board’s background is primarily in the area of law enforcement. This is not sufficient for the number of prisoners who have mental health issues, substance abuse issues or both (approximately 70% all prisoners).

Additionally, the Parole Board holds over 10,000 hearings a year, where members travel across the state, and in one, two or three-person panels, hear cases. That number includes 200 hearings with the full board for those serving life sentences eligible for parole. That means our one psychologist has no contact with the vast majority of persons seeking parole. We need Board members who are better trained to evaluate and predict behavior. That is what parole is all about and the result will be better informed and fairer decisions . There is currently no mechanism to ensure that our Parole Board has the education and skills necessary for well-informed, fair decisions that promotepublic safety.

2)The Council of State Government data on Massachusetts confirms that we are paroling prisoners at a very low rate and forcing many parole eligible people to wrap up their sentences and transition home with no help and no oversight: in 2015, only 19% of parole eligible prisoners in our Houses of Correction were released on parole; in that same year, while 46.4% of those serving DOC sentences received positive votes for parole, 18% of that group max out and [were] not released to parole supervision. CSG’s research concluded that we need to reduce our prison population through parole.These bills would help us assure that prisoners would not be judged solely on the underlying offense but on positive program accomplishments, detailed post-release plans, strong evidence of rehabilitation and low risk assessment scores. The bills incentivize good behavior and engagement in educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programming by creating a sense that parole release is the individual’s to lose. The parole rate will improve and Massachusetts will save money $5000 to supervise one parolee vs. $53,000 to house a state prisoner.

PLEASE MAKE TWO PHONE CALLS JULY 11-12. ASK THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE TO REPORT OUT FAVORABLY PAROLE BILLS S.779 AND H.3121.

Co-Chairs are William Brownsberger (Senate) and Claire Cronin (House). Please call the Senate Contact for the Judiciary Committee(617)-722-1280and the House Contact (617) 722-2396

Tell them: “As a concerned resident of Massachusetts, I am urging the Judiciary Committee to report out favorably parole bills S.779 and H.3121.”

If you can make a third phone call, listed below are the members of the Judiciary Committee. Click on the names below and you can get their contact info and the areas they represent. If any committee members are your legislators, it would be helpful for you to contact them too. This is a time sensitive issue so thank you for your ACTION NOW!

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Massachusetts Sen. Karen E. Spilka (Left) with members of Teens Leading the Way testify on juvenile justice issues on June 5th, before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

Much has been written about the important campaign to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to include 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. There are four bills filed by Massachusetts legislators for consideration this session that advocate for this path, easing the state into recognizing a group now called “emerging adults” as worthy of particular attention. One bill, launched by Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CFJJ), Roca, Inc., and United for Teen Equality Center (UTEC), is backed by more than forty organizations: the Juvenile Justice Omnibus Bill(S.947/H.3079). Sen. Karen E Spilka and Rep. Kay Khan are lead sponsors on this. Rep. Evandro Carvalho has filed his own bill to raise the age, H.3037, “An Act to promote better outcomes for young people in the Commonwealth.” Sen. Cynthia Creem is advocating for expanding juvenile court jurisdiction in her bill, S.816.. On June 5th, the Joint Committee on the Judiciary held a public hearing on the bills.

Raising the age makes sense say many experts. Vincent Schiraldi, Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, in a recent Boston Herald article said, “Many of the important bridges that criminologists believe young people need to cross before they age out of adolescent crime — like completing their education and getting a job — come later for today’s generation of young people and are negatively affected by an adult-level conviction. This is especially true for young African-Americans and Latinos who are incarcerated in Massachusetts at 3.2 and 1.7 times the rate of whites, respectively.”

Lael Chester, also a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, testified with Rep. Carvahlo at the June 5th hearing at the State House. She cited brain development which is not complete until the mid-20s or later, and pointed out that research shows how “emerging adults” are developmentally similar to their 16- and 17-year-old peers: impulsive, susceptible to the influence of friends, and risk-takers.

The State House Newsas reported in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette quoted Chester from a May briefing at the State House as saying “Emerging adults drive a disproportionately large share of the criminal justice system, making up 10 percent of the Massachusetts population but 29 percent of arrests and 23 percent of the state’s incarcerated population.” Chester said “They also have the highest recidivism rates among all age groups: 76 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds released from jail or prison in 2011 were re-arraigned within three years.”

Those who argue in favor of raising the ageof juvenile court jurisdiction also say an overly punitive approach isn’t workingand that most young people age out of crime. Research has shown this time and time again.

Lael Chester testifying before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on June 5th, 2017.

One aspect of the campaign that is not getting enough attention, in my opinion, is why it is so crucial to exclude young children from our court system. As I wrote for Truthoutmore than two years ago in 2015, “Children as young as 6 can go to court in North Carolina, while four states – Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island – set the youngest age at 7. Thirty-three states set no age for court involvement, but according to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, that means age 7 is the default, or ‘the youngest age under common law where a child would be considered capable of criminal intent.'”

At the June 5th hearing, retired Juvenile Court Justice Leslie Harris said it most eloquently when he spoke: “I am concerned that we have children in the system who cannot spell the word ‘criminal’ because they are too young.”

Several of the Massachusetts bills (H.3037, H.3078, S.947) would exclude children under 12 from appearing in a courtroom. The actual age number for a child to be considered culpable seems somewhat arbitrary, even among experts. According to Citizens for Juvenile Justice, a 2003 study found that “children ages 11 to 13 demonstrated significantly poorer understanding of trial matters, as well as poorer reasoning and recognition of the relevance of information for a legal defense than did a 14- and 15-year-olds.”

I interviewed Mariame Kaba, the founding director of Project NIA in Chicago, which aims to end youth incarceration, for my Truthout article. She said, “At a certain point, age is irrelevant. We don’t treat children who are Black as children.” The American Psychological Association underscored this issue with its 2014 report that Black boys as young as 10 are more likely than their White peers “to be mistaken as older, perceived as guilty, and face police violence if accused of a crime.”

Arresting kids will never get to the bottom of the problem.”Kids are in conflict with the law because of unmet needs,”wroteKaba and Dominican University professor Michelle VanNatta in a 2013 report on the state of youth justice. From their findings: Kids who act out may be facing overcrowded school classrooms or have crises in their families; there may be a lack of recreational and after-school activities available; students may be homeless; school resource officers and police patrol schools, often threatening, rather than protecting children.

Some states are beginning to agree that the lower age of juvenile court involvement must be raised as well. In California, there is a presumption that a child under age 14 lacks the understanding of “wrongfulness” and the state “needs clear proof” to rebut that presumption. In Ohio, the courts rarely find competence for a child under age 14, and in the past 30 years in Florida, no child under age 12 has been processed in juvenile court.

Keeping kids out of the justice system is a worthy goal, and experts agreethat community based interventions are far more effective and successful in holding a young child accountable for their actions.

We need more justice through education and not through punishment, and this particularly applies to our children.

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Please see my newest article on Truthout and share it: “Directly Impacted Youth Are Leading Fights Against Racism and the Criminal Punishment System.” The article features Teens Leading the Way, Assata’s Daughters and more!

Assata’s Daughters canvasses in Chicago in 2016 to get the name of a park changed for Ronald “Ronnieman” Johnson, who was killed by police. (Photo: courtesy Page May, a cofounder of Assata’s Daughters.)